The Motor Camp

Had a wonderful quirky time on Saturday night attending the world premiere of The Motor Camp at Circa.

Sometimes a production manages to bring it all together – the plot, the stage, the acting, the script all combining seamlessly – and The Motor Camp achieved this. It was a first rate production. 

The setting is native Kiwi-ana. A couple of old caravans tethered at a motor camp, with awnings stretching out from them. The unseen but often heard camp manager, Dutchie, provides some of the humour with his stern rules and notices.

One of the characters, liberal university education lecturer Frank (played convincely by Tim Sprite), rails against Dutchie and his wife, Jude, asks him what he has against Holland. Frank responds that he loves Holland, it is a wonderful liberal country – because all the fascist Dutch have left it and come to New Zealand. There’s just enough truth in it, to be bloody funny.

But Dutchie is not crucial to the plot. At the heart of it, it is a tale of two families, especially two fathers and two kids. The other family is headed up by tradesman Mike Hislop (Phil Vaughan who plays the role hilariously), who is everything Frank isn’t – rude, crude and semi-neathandal. Frank has him pigeon-holed as a racist, but has to reconsider when his Maori wife and step-son enter the scene.

The plot is very crafty – many things mentioned early on you take just as humourous asides, but they turn out to be quite important to the story later on – the phonics vs non phonics fixation of Frank for example.

The two younger actors were excellent – Florence Mulheron as 15 year old Holly Redmond and Anthony Young at 16 year old Jared Tairoa. Florence just nailed being a surly 15 year old who wants to be at “The Mount” with her boyfriend, and Anthony captured being a softly spoken youth on the verge of being an adult.

Danielle Mason plays Jude Redmond, the long-suffering wife of Frank. My first reaction was that she was far too young/hot to be cast as the mother of a 15 year old, but being a MILF forms part of the hilarity that ensues.

I won’t give away more of the plot, because I do recommend people go see it for themselves. It manages to blend a nice story about culture clash, with a boatful of laughs. I was cracking up almost non-stop.

Some of the play is a bit r-rated. Not at all offensive, but you might not want to have your ten year old attend it, and possibly not the grand-mother either.

My only criticism is that the ending was too perfect, too happy – a bit unreal – but hey its is a play, not a biography. The final line of the play however is hilarious as Holly and Jared head off to the lake, and in response to him asking what they should do, she replies they should keep out of her parents hair.